Monday, March 31, 2014

The following is guest post by Randi Sims, a sophomore at Clemson University enrolled in Dr. Barrett's Creative Inquiry course focused on amphibian conservation.

Today in our society whenever an environmental topic appears
in conversation it always seems to be followed by the words: “global warming”
or “fossil fuels”. Very few times, if ever, does the general public talk about the
issues facing wildlife or, more specifically, amphibians. If these people are
not discussing problems with amphibians it’s also a pretty safe bet that they
are not saying anything for an even more specific amphibian: a salamander.

My name is
Randi Sims and I am part of a diverse group of individuals at Clemson University who are trying to give
these creatures their voice in our world. This group is a Creative
Inquiry class specifically focused on how exurbanization (or the movement
of individuals from a more populated to a less populated area) in the
Appalachian Mountains is affecting salamanders. Each one of us are developing
and researching our own questions regarding amphibian and stream conservation.
It is through this that we hope to make a difference in the way exurbanization
is conducted.

Before
describing my own project, I feel that it is necessary to give a little
background on salamanders. As an environmental science major I have always
heard of these little creatures, but never truly understood what their
influence was on the environment or why they were of such importance to stream
ecology. The honest truth is that this is one of the first things I should have
known going into my major. For those of you who are unaware of how an ecosystem
works, this is the simplest explanation I can give: it’s very much like a
house, it takes many sturdy parts to build a strong, sound structure. Each
organism down to the smallest micro invertebrate is a like a brick to that
house, and once you take one brick out it becomes much less stable, threatening
to fall. In this comparison, the streams are like this house and the
salamanders in it are the foundational bricks. By taking them out, almost every
thing else collapses around them.

Salamanders
are not only important to the stream ecosystem, but also to our own lives. One
of the things many individuals who live near watersheds find to be an issue is
a large mosquito population. While this may not seem like too much of a problem,
it is a large annoyance to many people and even a safety concern when taking
into account diseases like Malaria. Scientists Robert
Brodman and Ryan Dorton have quantified the affect that salamanders have on
the populations of these insects around riparian habitats. In their research,
they discovered that one particular type of salamander (the Tiger salamander or
Ambystoma tigrinum) removes 144
mosquitos for every one salamander larvae (2011). Seeing that one clutch of
salamander eggs can contain as many as fifty viable larvae, this can mean a lot
of mosquitoes are being removed by these amphibians, keeping their population
size in check (Gopurenko,
Williams, McCormick, DeWoody, 2006).As you can see, these are just two
of the ways that salamanders impact both the ecosystems and our own lives.
Unfortunately, though, we are also impacting them, but not in a good way. In
developing my project I have learned that there are a lot of factors in
exurbanization that threaten delicate ecosystems in these areas and the
organisms in it; specifically our amphibian friends. My project looks in detail
at one aspect of it: stream flow. While it may seem like something that means
little to nothing to the average person, all of the debris, sediment, and trash
building up in the streams from construction are causing huge changes in this
factor. It is my goal of this experiment to look at specifically how their
young are being affected by a change in stream flow. To me this is one of the
most interesting and maybe even important parts of the overall question of
affects of exurbanization, however as my classmates can concur, it is only one side
effect of what we are starting to see is a much larger issue.Throughout the course of this
creative inquiry class my peers and I hope to make a real difference in the
lives of these creatures and, consequently, our own. We are only halfway
through the semester and already forming our projects, as well as preparing for
even more in-depth research. All of us are extremely excited about this class
and our progress in it, and hope to keep you posted on our upcoming
experiments!